Giving Compass' Take:

• Crafting the right approach and framework for an employee volunteering program can be critical for its success. Here are a couple of questions to think about before starting. 

• How can employers work in collaboration with corporate social responsibility teams to build the most effective and long-lasting volunteer programs? 

• Read more about why employee volunteering is more than corporate social responsibility. 


There is no one-size-fits-all solution for creating effective employee volunteering programmes and there is little-to-no data to substantiate the merits of a skills-based, deep engagement model from a large-scale one-time event.

Different approaches work, often complementing one another. Crafting the right mix that works for your company, your partners, and the communities you are engaging with requires answering a few questions and framing them from multiple perspectives.

  1. Why do we want to do this? The proverbial step back, which despite pressures from senior management, the board, and competitors’ savvy marketing campaigns around volunteering and social impact, begs to be answered up front. Understanding key motivations will ensure an employee volunteering strategy that is relevant to everyone involved.
  2. Who owns it? Too often, employee volunteering programmes are the sole responsibility of an already stretched CSR team. However, in order to build a results-based culture of volunteering, shared ownership is essential, which means all key stakeholders, such as business heads, senior management teams, HR and communications, need to be consulted and accountable.
  3. What are the benefits to everyone involved? Clearly framing motivations, outcomes, and overarching success metrics is the institutional part of the equation. The other part is matching these with expected benefits for employees as well as for communities and organisations
  4. How are those benefits best realised? There are a number of intermediary organisations that specialise in curating employee volunteering programmes for a fee. If the aim is employee satisfaction, brand and team building, then budgets for these should be made available within the company for this.
  5. Where do we go from here? Understand the company’s motivations, consult key decision makers, engage peer groups internally, and co-create with partner organisations.

Read the full article about employee volunteering by Gayatri Divecha at India Development Review.